Gifts of Gold

Updated Jan. 9, 1998 12:01 a.m. ET

The passing of the calendar year had no healing effect on Asia's diving currencies, whose values continued to whistle on down in the first week of trading in 1998. Having already hit up the International Monetary Fund, Japan and the U.S. for aid, regional governments are now looking for parachutes in less orthodoxes places: their citizens' jewelry boxes. Leaders in Thailand and Korea have appealed to the people to turn in their gold trinkets so that the central bank can melt them down and buy dollars to prop up their leaden currencies. In return for their offerings, Thai donors will receive government bonds, and...